Abstract
These researches were instigated by an interest in the phenomenon of tetany, particularly in that form known as gastric tetany. Very little work has been done in this field on human subjects, none recently; and it seems that no blood analyses have been published. Whatever work was done was not convincing and the old hypotheses such as the dehydration and mechanical theories once offered as a result of clinical studies to explain the condition must be discarded as untenable.
There has been some successful experimental work on dogs, however, in which tetany was produced by obstructing the pylorus and in which various disturbances in the salts of the blood were recorded.
To summarize: McCann 1 (1918) was the one to discover that after pyloric closure there was a rise in the combined carbon dioxide. This was confirmed by MacCallum 2 (1920) and in the surgical laboratories of this college (Hastings 3 and Murray I 92 I). MacCallum and ourselves also found a markedly diminished chloride content with normal values for calcium. In our laboratory, contrary to expectations, it was found that the H-ion concentration was only slightly and what we considered insignificantly raised. Finally, Dr. Greenwald, who was good enough to analyze specimens from three of our dogs, showed that there was no consistent change in the percentage of sodium.
The analyses to be reported, indicate that the changes noted in dogs may occur in humans as well.
Subjects with a carbon-dioxide tension of 70 vols. per cent. or over were considered abnormal and included in the group. In the chloride estimations anything below 5.5 grams per liter for plasma or 4.3 grams per liter for whole blood was deemed pathological.
In all, we studied seven cases; three of them had obstructions at or near the pylorus from ulcer, and two from cancer; one man had subacute gastric dilatation following appendectomy, and the seventh member of the group had an annular carcinoma of the lower jejunum.
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